e cold-eyed girl, and showing her glittering
teeth with the grin of a young tigress; "but one was a captain. I shall
do better next time; it was my first battle, thou knowest!"

The more timid of the bystanders exchanged a glance of horror, and drew
back. The mechanic resumed sullenly,--"I seek no quarrel with lass or
lover. I am a plain, blunt man, with a wife and children, who are dear
to me; and if I have a grudge to the nigromancer, it is because he
glamoured my poor boy Tim. See!"--and he caught up a blue-eyed, handsome
boy, who had been clinging to his side, and baring the child's arm,
showed it to the spectators; there was a large scar on the limb, and it
was shrunk and withered.

"It was my own fault," said the little fellow, deprecatingly. The
affectionate father silenced the sufferer with a cuff on the cheek, and
resumed: "Ye note, neighbours, the day when the foul wizard took this
little one in his arms: well, three weeks afterwards--that very day
three weeks--as he was standing like a lamb by the fire, the good wife's
caldron seethed over, without reason or rhyme, and scalded his arm till
it rivelled up like a leaf in November; and if that is not glamour, why
have we laws against witchcraft?"

"True, true!" groaned the chorus.

The boy, who had borne his father's blow without a murmur, now again
attempted remonstrance. "The hot water went over the gray cat, too, but
Master Warner never bewitched her, daddy."

"He takes his part!--You hear the daff laddy? He takes the old
nigromancer's part,--a sure sign of the witchcraft; but I'll leather it
out of thee, I will!" and the mechanic again raised his weighty arm. The
child did not this time await the blow; he dodged under the butcher's
apron, gained the door, and disappeared. "And he teaches our own
children to fly in our faces!" said the father, in a kind of whimper.
The neighbours sighed in commiseration.

"Oh," he exclaimed in a fiercer tone, grinding his teeth, and shaking
his clenched fist towards Adam Warner's melancholy house, "I say again,
if the king did not protect the vile sorcerer, I would free the land
from his devilries ere his black master could come to his help."

"The king cares not a straw for Master Warner or his inventions, my
son," said a rough, loud voice. All turned, and saw the friar standing
in the midst of the circle. "Know ye not, my children, that the king
sent the wretch neck and crop out of the palace for having bewitched
th